MTI Success Story: Epic Enterprise Transformation Journey
“Individuals were excited; they had been asking me for a raise,” Heidi Maghan said when describing the momentum needed to shift away from wage crews and contracts. She is Executive Director of Epic Enterprise in Dundas, Minnesota. Since 1976, Epic has been providing supports to people with disabilities, helping to meet their employment aspirations and educational, social, and recreational needs.
Through technical assistance from the Minnesota Transformation Initiative, one of Epic’s main goals in the past couple of years has been to prioritize competitive integrated employment and eliminate subminimum wage contracts and enclave crews.
This goal became popular when Epic communicated that it would pay at least minimum wage. Committed to Epic’s vision, the board supported this first step, even if it meant renegotiating contracts and discussing opportunities for competitive and integrated hires. With defined goals, Epic made lists of employers, prepared talking points, gathered resources, and planned to work with businesses. As they spoke with their internal staff, Heidi and others at Epic noticed a natural, organic shift that prioritized competitive and integrated careers.
While not everyone within the organization or leadership was fully on board with the changes, most internal staff at Epic were and are “open to trying something new, they were open to change,” Heidi said. As the organization prepared to engage with businesses, she noticed that the people they support, internal staff, and some families simply started their own conversations with employers about employment options.
Epic leaned in to support these organic efforts instead of waiting until all their plans were set. At the time, Epic was engaged in intensive planning for what outreach, conversations, and negotiations would look like with their business partners. Then an eager staff member volunteered to speak with businesses about potential jobs on Epic’s behalf. “Why don’t I just [contact the businesses]?,” the staff member asked. Again, Epic quickly shifted priorities to offer support. Heidi said that the shift was not perfect and not in their initial plans, but they decided to move forward anyway. “Why are we still trying to figure this out when he is ready to go? So why not run with it?” Heidi said.
Epic admits that organizational change is not perfect. As they prioritized competitive integrated employment, some staff who supported the subminimum wage work chose to leave, some families opposed the new priorities, and even a few employers declined to work with the organization on person-centered job placement. However, the champions, advocates, and supporters of Epic’s new mission outnumbered the leavers. Epic found new jobs for many people working on contract work. These jobs came from a network of new and existing local businesses quick to support Epic’s commitment. Epic supported 13 people to find new jobs just this year. Half of those were people employed previously on subminimum wage contracts.
Epic’s organizational change was partly motivated by what the organization heard from the people they employed on contracts and their families. They wanted jobs beyond crews and contracts. One person Epic supports ran into someone he knew in the community shortly after getting a new competitive and integrated position. The person described their new role with the same employer by saying, “It is official, I have a ‘real’ job now.”
Progress continues for Epic. They are now focus on supporting community life engagement, using technology to support their work, and training their internal staff to support people. They are “trying to make sure everybody was doing some piece of the change, and not owning it all by themselves,” according to Heidi.
Epic has identified other areas where they aim to improve, including aligning daily work with best practice. The organization is sending multiple internal staff through Customized Employment training, leaning on principles referenced in the 10 Essential Elements of Provider Transformation , participating in an MTI-led pilot to support people with the highest support needs to find work, being active members of the Association of People Supporting Employment First , and receiving technical assistance through MTI.
Consistent communication with partners has sustained the organization’s changes. For example, the Epic team has presented organizational transformation plans to their board, set aside time for a half-day all-staff meeting about the changes, held an open house parent night where people they support and their families could hear from peers thriving in their new jobs, and instituted a new topical discussion time with day service and employment staff focused on best practices they call PODs or “Purposeful Ongoing Discussions.”
Epic is learning to juggle multiple change management efforts at the same time. In part, this means remaining flexible and adjusting when things are not going according to plan, or in the order anticipated. “It’s hard to keep track of it all and hard to keep it all moving,” Heidi said. Still, she advised other organizations not to “stop moving forward just because you hit a road bump. Keep going, work on the road bump, but keep moving things forward.”